The Effects Of Poverty On Child Development

Of course, there are differences between being a poor in the developing country and being poor in the developed country, but there are some key factors about poverty that are common despite the location and the quality of country’s development. Therefore, I will start discussing general effects of poverty on child development. Poverty increases children’s vulnerability to both biological and psychological risks that can highly affect their developmental opportunities. As researches and statistics show, children in low-income neighborhoods are more likely to experience behavioral problems that negatively impact their cognitive development than children living in affluent families. Even short time food deprivations have a huge impact on children’s

The situation when brain changes depending on individual experience is called plasticity dependent on experience. These changes are associated with structural changes in neurons and synapses, brain vasculature, brain cortex weight and sickness and genetic expression. The cerebellum has also been found to display plastic properties in response to environmental influences. The concept of neural plasticity can not only have negative influence on the brain development, but also the design of neuroprotective and neurorestorative strategies can be used for the treatment of some brain disorders. The observations suggest that even in absence of continuous stimulation, the brain maintains residuals of previous experiences, which in turn may result in either positive or negative influences depending on actual conditions of the environmental exposure. Overall, environments have significant influences on the social behavior and cognitive skills. And brain organization is influenced by experience, genetics and the existence of sensitive developmental periods followed by a decreasing neuroplasticity over time. Identifying how poverty affects child development allows us to take into account them while trying to come up with the intervention

For instance, Ornoy analyzed child’s achievenement skills with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children in preschoolers who were born in family where heroin-dependent mothers were. This caused high attention deficit from parent to children and hyperactivity disorder in children. (page 65-2) Physical risks in extremely poor environment can also influence language skills. SES affects child development in terms of home environment and family investments in child health and education. Children from low income communities have higher risk to suffer from environmental toxic agents (pesticides, dioxins, etc.) influence on their physical and mental health, such as vitamin dysfunctions, behavioral problems and disorders. Malnutrition among these poor children can cause physical illnesses as well as cognitive and socioemotional disorders, that can last throughout adolescent. Because appropriate nutrition for children is essential for brain functioning throughout developmental stages. Chronic malnutrition is the risk for their long-term memory, anemia, reducing energy and other diseases. In addition, because poor families don’t have access to health systems, sometimes they use nonstandard treatment, that can even deeper the